Sustainable development and green chemistry in chemistry education

This special issue focuses on the research and development, as well as pedagogical approaches, of the implementation of green and sustainable chemistry practices within the framework of chemistry education, as showcased at ECRICE 2024.The 16th European Conference on Research in Chemical Education took place at NOVA School of Science and Technology, Campus da Caparica, Portugal, between September 5 and 7, 2024.This conference on research in chemical education represented a significant opportunity to share new findings and advancements in the field.Understanding how learners acquire knowledge and how to facilitate and stimulate this process is vital.It is essential to explore several learning environments, embracing new educational tools and innovative approaches that integrate neuroeducation, technology, and artificial intelligence into chemical education to enhance student engagement.However, in the current context, these efforts alone are not sufficient.It is imperative to view these initiatives through the lens of sustainability, particularly in alignment with the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. 1 Therefore, ECRICE 2024s theme was "Chemical Education for Sustainable Development: Empowering Education Communities", Figure 1.The 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) proposed by the United Nations and adopted in 2015, emphasise sustainable and environmentally friendly chemistry.Since then, educational systems have begun to integrate these goals, promoting a future that values both human and environmental well-being. 1,2As a result, practical chemistry education increasingly reflects sustainability and green chemistry (GC) principles, integrating them in the curriculum. 2,3Teachers play a crucial role by incorporating green activities, microscale experiments, and ecofriendly reactants, significantly influencing students' sustainable practices and behaviours. [3][4]4][5][6] Laboratory work plays a pivotal role in chemistry education, 7-9 not only because it helps connect theory to practice, boosts motivation, increases students' interest in learning science, supports the acquisition of laboratory skills and techniques, and improves understanding of fundamental procedural and conceptual knowledge (such as concepts, principles, laws, and theories), but also because it also fosters scientific attitudes like rigour, persistence, reasoning, critical thinking, creativity, objectivity, curiosity, responsibility, and cooperation.Engaging in laboratory activities enhances critical thinking and problem-solving abilities, enabling students to apply the scientific method through trial and error.It also improves scientific reasoning by familiarising students with processes of scientific inquiry.Moreover, it can inspire curiosity and support personal growth by promoting social skills through collaborative activities.Ultimately, laboratory work is rooted in active learning: 10-14 it transforms students into active participants by allowing them to experiment, manipulate materials, and directly engage with scientific phenomena.And knowing these, the focus of implementing green (GC) and sustainable chemistry (SC) in schools is rooted in school laboratory practices. 14,15It is important to note that although sustainable chemistry (SC) provides a broader perspective than green chemistry (GC), green chemistry aims to minimise waste, reduce energy consumption, and improve safety in chemical processes to lessen harmful impacts; it mainly focuses on

PurposeThis paper aims to discuss the knowledge levels, attitudes and behaviours regarding the concept of sustainable development among pre-university programme educators, as well as the potential barriers and opportunities they face in adopting the concept of sustainable development in the teaching of the pre-university level chemistry module at a public university in Malaysia.Design/methodology/approachA survey was conducted with eight educators of a pre-university programme at a public university located in Selangor, Malaysia. This pre-university programme exposes students to advanced courses in science, which are very much like first-year university courses for candidates who are interested in gaining admission to degree programmes. For this study, the focus was on chemistry educators only. The collected data were analysed through descriptive analysis following which interviews were conducted with the respondents.FindingsIn general, the educators have good knowledge and attitudes towards the concept of sustainable development. Moreover, their projected knowledge (K), attitude (A) and behaviour (B) focus more on environmental dimensions, as opposed to other sustainable development dimensions. While the integration of the concept of sustainable development in chemistry teaching is restricted by a few barriers, such as content-based learning, lack of guidebooks related to sustainable development and an overcrowded curriculum, positive responses from the chemistry educators indicate that there are opportunities to implement sustainable chemistry concepts in the pre-university chemistry module.Research limitations/implicationsThe present study was conducted with several limitations; the data were obtained from a small sample size at an institute located within a public university. The respondents of this research consisted of only three existing chemistry educators and five administrators who are also educators. Further studies about sustainable chemistry teaching should include samples from other public and private universities.Originality/valueThis paper is instrumental in assisting the Ministry of Education, administrators, as well as educators within the pre-university sector to shift their goals towards sustainable chemistry teaching to achieve success in education for sustainable development.

In recent years, a growing number of publications have emerged discussing how to integrate education for sustainable development (ESD) and systems thinking into science education in general, and chemistry education in particular. However, when it comes to more specific fields of chemistry education, most studies focus almost exclusively on higher education. Examples of ESD units in secondary chemistry teaching are mostly limited to single topics. They often do not explicitly deal with the theoretical concepts behind green or sustainable chemistry. This paper reports on a long-term initiative to develop secondary chemistry education. This effort attempts to thoroughly integrate ESD based on the concept of green chemistry into high school programs. The project is based on teacher-centered action research, a cyclical development and research approach within authentic classroom practice. The process was supported by an academic chemistry education research group and a network of experienced action research teachers. The current paper describes the development of a teaching sequence for first-year upper secondary chemistry education. Elements of the development and selected findings from the accompanying feedback processes are reported.

This article analyses Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) in chemistry by reviewing existing challenges and future possibilities on the levels of the teacher and the student. Pedagogical frameworks that are found eligible in practice are reviewed. Lesson themes that are suitable for implementing socio-scientific issues (SSI) related to ESD into basic chemistry education at schools are discussed. Based on this analysis, three new demonstrative pedagogical models for ESD in chemistry are presented to help guide the work of teachers. The models draw on an interdisciplinary reading of research in the field of SSI-based science education, sustainability science, green chemistry and environmental education. The current state of ESD in Finnish chemistry education is used as an example case throughout the article. Two tasks where future development is required were recognised. The first task concerns supporting chemistry teachers in overcoming the challenges with SSI and ESD they face in their work. The second task is to ensure that students are more often provided with more relevant and flexible chemistry content and studying methods.

Giving students the knowledge and skills they need to support sustainable development is one way that sustainability literacy is being promoted. To enhance the material on sustainability literacy, this article maps perspectives on sustainability literacy and the relationship between the Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) idea and chemistry education. The study's objectives are to: (1) map out the body of research on sustainability literacy; and (2) examine how the ESD idea relates to chemistry education to promote sustainability literacy. According to Kitchenham, the approach is Review. 31 international journals published between 2012 and 2023 were the sources of the papers used; they were retrieved from the Google Scholar database and Scopus-indexed. The study's findings demonstrate the widespread applicability of sustainability literacy across a range of scientific domains and application foci. Many well-researched ESD implementation approaches in chemistry education might serve as a guide when creating ESD in the classroom. An overview of the content of sustainability literacy that is pertinent to chemistry education as well as how it may be applied to different learning domains is given in this paper. It also offers perspectives for scientists, chemical instructors, and ESD developers.

The years between 2005 and 2014 were declared by the United Nations as worldwide Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (DESD). The intended purpose of DESD is to promote and more thoroughly focus education as a crucial tool, preparing young people to be responsible future citizens, so that our future generations can shape society in a sustainable manner. All educational levels and domains are to be involved in contributing to Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), including chemistry. This paper explores the meaning of sustainable development, education for sustainable development and what ESD pedagogy will mean for chemistry education. It provides an overview of different models suggesting how such integration of sustainability issues can be compatible with chemistry education. Some consequences and implications arising from this approach will also be discussed.

Education must be able to connect technology advances, the industry and learning in the classroom. These include advances in the fields of chemistry and chemical education to teach students to be able to contribute to solving problems and sustainable development in the future. Chemical education has the main role in education for sustainable development. For this reason, we need a concept in a chemical education curriculum that can support sustainability. System thinking in chemistry education is relevant to sustainability. Through system thinking, students are challenged to holistically understand the scientific process. This study aims to review the literature on systems thinking and sustainability in chemical education. A total of 9 articles from reputed international journals were the main sources for review. The results of the literature study conducted were the implementation of the system thinking in a chemical education curriculum was a potential thing. The relationship between sustainability and systems thinking were discussed.

This paper presents a study focusing on differences in Israeli Jewish and Arab chemistry teachers’ beliefs regarding teaching and learning of chemistry in the upper secondary schools. Israel is a country experiencing the problems of diverse cultural orientation of its inhabitants but applying the same educational system to its diverse cultural sectors. Education includes the same curriculum in chemistry for both the Israeli Jewish and Arab cultural sectors as well as final examinations (matriculation) set centrally by the Ministry of Education. Thus, this study can serve as a striking case for other countries facing similar cultural diversity. The study is based on two different instruments that are both qualitative and quantitative in nature. The qualitative data stem from chemistry teachers’ drawings of themselves as teachers in a typical classroom situation accompanied by four open questions. The data analysis follows three qualitative scales: beliefs about classroom organization, beliefs about teaching objectives and epistemological beliefs. A quantitative study gives insights into teachers’ beliefs about what characterizes good education. The main goal of the present paper is to determine whether both groups of chemistry teachers with different sociocultural background in Israel hold different views about education in general and chemistry education in particular. The findings provide evidence that in Israeli chemistry classrooms, the beliefs of Arabic teachers differ from those of the Jewish teachers, although both groups live in the same country and operate the same educational system.

This paper investigates the relationship between Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) and chemistry / chemical engineering education at university level. It does so by describing the genealogy of the RRI concept as well as outlining three different interpretations of what RRI refers to and combining them into the hexagon model of RRI. This model constitutes the theoretical framework for this work. The second part of the paper addresses how the science and engineering education research literature has embraced insights from RRI. The hexagon model of RRI explicitly includes a dimension on (science and engineering) education, and this paper will contribute to this dimension by investigating and discussing how research literature can link RRI and tertiary chemistry and chemical engineering education. The paper shows that very limited work has been done to liaise chemistry higher education and chemical engineering education with the RRI framework. In the concluding section of the paper, we discuss how the reported educational experiences on RRI in STEM can be translated into higher education in chemical engineering and chemistry. Hereby a proposal to fill the identified knowledge gap is made. The core of the paper is conceptual, and its central purpose is to introduce RRI to a chemical engineering and chemistry ethics education audience. As mentioned, the RRI approach has gone largely unnoticed within engineering ethics education, and only received limited attention within ethics of chemistry education. We hope that these research communities will find it inspirational to get involved in the RRI framework and to actively enact RRI insights.

The debate on the use of pesticides is very current in the public media when it comes to topics such as organic farming, bee mortality, and the use of glyphosate. The broad range of pesticide applications and their potential environmental impact makes pesticides an interesting topic for science education in general and for chemistry teaching in particular. This is particularly true when conventional pesticide use is contrasted with current chemistry research efforts to develop alternatives based on the ideas of green chemistry. This paper discusses the potential relevance of pesticides for chemistry education in connection with education for sustainable development. It gives a brief outlook on pesticides in science teaching and connects the topic to socio-scientific issue-based chemistry education. A case study which developed a lesson plan for secondary school students is presented here. It defines pesticides, before focusing on the development of green pesticides as potential alternatives to current products. The lesson is focusing learning about chemistry rather than learning of chemistry in the means that the lesson introduces quite young chemistry learners (age range 15–17) to ideas of green and sustainable chemistry and how green alternatives in chemistry can be assessed and compared to traditional alternatives. Video vignettes of a scientist are used to introduce the topic to students. Finally, both glyphosate as a conventional, industrial pesticide and orange oil as an example of a green pesticide are compared using spider chart diagrams. The lesson plan was cyclically designed by a group of ten chemistry teachers using participatory action research. It was piloted with the help of secondary school chemistry student teachers and then tested in five German secondary school classes (grades 10/11). The use of the spider charts was regarded as especially helpful by the learners, most of whom felt that they had been able to understand the controversy surrounding pesticides.

Case hacks in action: Examples from a case study on green chemistry in education for sustainable development

‡ To whose memory this paper is dedicated. Joe Breen was a leading pioneer of green chemistry. Following his retirement from EPA, Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics, where he worked on asbestos, dioxins, and pollution prevention, Joe became Executive Director of the Green Chemistry Institute, a not-for-profit organization promoting environmentally benign syntheses and processing. His premature death on 19 July 1999 created a void in the Working Party team, but encouraged all of us to continue our mission, having in mind his passion for this work and his exquisite friendship.

The purpose of the study was to assess strategies for enhancing the integration of cultural practices into the teaching and learning of chemistry in secondary schools. The study adopted a descriptive survey research design and the population of the study comprised 19,920 respondents. Two research questions and two hypotheses guided the study. The instrument used for data collection was “Strategies Enhancing Integrating Cultural Practices Questionnaire (SEICPQ)” developed by the researchers. Mean and standard deviation were used to answer the research questions and t-test statistic was used to test the null hypotheses at 0.05 significance. The result revealed that incorporation of cultural practices into the chemistry curriculum content and adequate training of teachers on the integration of cultural practices in teaching chemistry and among others were identified as strategies that could enhance the integration of cultural practices. Non-incorporation of cultural practices into the chemistry curriculum content among others were identified as factors affecting the integration of cultural practices. The results also revealed that teachers and students do not significantly differ on their responses on strategies enhancing as well as the factors militating against the integration of cultural knowledge and practices into teaching of chemistry. Necessary conclusions were made.

This survey explores the experience and perceptions of Italian chemistry teachers toward Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). In Italy, chemistry lessons could include learning about sustainable development issues, but it is unclear to which extent ESD in chemistry lessons is operated. Additionally, ESD became a central part of the Italian interdisciplinary teaching subject of Educazione Civica (EC) which might be translated as citizenship education. In EC, all science subjects are involved, including chemistry, where lessons are taught by chemistry teachers. This survey inquires about the potential incorporation of ESD and also nanoscience into chemistry lessons in general and in EC in particular from the viewpoint of Italian chemistry teachers. The focus is on teachers’ attitudes to including ESD and nanoscience in their lessons and potential difficulties in implementing them.

Almost everyone who teaches chemistry in the K-12 system (or its foreign equivalents) and almost everyone employed as a faculty member in a chemistry department qualifies as a chemical educator: we are chemists interested in helping others understand chemistry. One way to look at the chemical education community is to divide our activities into a spectrum of three intertwined branches: instruction, practice, and research. The branches intertwine because many of us are active in more than one branch.Instruction is familiar to all of us. Even if we do not engage in instruction, we have been on the receiving end. Instructors use their knowledge to assist their clientele’s learning. It is not difficult to identify the largest group of instructors: we are teachers in K-12 classes or faculty in post-secondary classrooms and teaching laboratories at all levels (from technical schools and two-year colleges to medical and graduate schools). Graduate teaching assistants, who bear a significant part of the responsibility for delivering instruction at many institutions, constitute another group. However, instruction occurs in settings other than the classroom and teaching laboratory. Tutors who staff learning centers are instructors. Research directors who direct the laboratory work of undergraduate and graduate students are instructors. The chemical education component of their activities lies in the transmission of attitudes, skills, and habits of inquiry to their students.Many chemical educators are practitioners. Practitioners coordinate or direct programs and develop the tools and methods used to teach chemistry. The obvious practitioners are directors of general chemistry or directors of teaching laboratories. Others of us include software developers, textbook authors, and those who develop laboratory experiments or lecture demonstrations. Less obvious may be those involved in curriculum development, outreach, and teacher preparation. We should also include institutional staff at the ACS, NSF, and government departments of education in addition to laboratory managers and many other professional staff at post-secondary institutions. Another important and overlooked group are reviewers. Their work goes almost unnoticed, yet a thoughtful review can greatly improve a textbook, laboratory experiment, or journal article.A smaller group of chemical educators do research in chemical education. Those engaged in chemical education research examine what works and why or why not. Some are members of schools of education; others are members of chemistry departments. Chemical education researchers can provide tested, theory-based, or data-based insights and methodologies to the chemical education community. We focus on a variety of basic research questions. How and why do students learn? Why is chemistry difficult, even for many good students? What works to facilitate effective learning